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Reds! A Revolutionary Timeline

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Spartakrod said:
This is honestly an artefact of the fact that power has generally been in the hands of deeply conservative elites for most of history, and throughout most of the past 300 years, progressive forces were nearly always the underdogs whether it was revolutionary France finding it had to fight the entire rest of Europe at once or the Soviet Revolution being confined to a country that French industrialists often called "our India" during the time of the Franco-Russian entente and having to kill its pride and spare its shame to afford to even hope to catch up to the rest of the world.
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I mean the left has made way more than it's own share of unforced errors at the same time - starting with the French revolution, where war with the rest of Europe was very avoidable. The 48er's couldn't make common cause with the Liberals (and vice versa), the Mexicans couldn't get past personality politics, the left collectively shot itself in it's foot with it's reaction to WWI, the everything about how the Bolsheviks got into power and stayed there...

I generally agree that this timeline doesn't have enough simple inertia working against the forces of progress. It takes time to change attitudes and establish new normals, and after the initial spurt of revolutionary activity, there is inevitably going to be a period of consolidation and retrogression. Once people in power have power, they'll seek to maintain it, and generally, they tend to be pretty successful.

I'm a left winger in that I believe in the perfectibility of mankind through collective effort, but I think anyone who is telling you what the endpoint looks like is either deluded or lying. Marx was right when he grasped that morals and ideologies were historically situated, but he then proceeded to miss the bus when he assumed that by recognizing that pattern, he had accurately grasped the full weave of human history.
 
LtDanAintGotLegs said:
I mean the left has made way more than it's own share of unforced errors at the same time - starting with the French revolution, where war with the rest of Europe was very avoidable.
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Sooner or later the monarchies of Europe would've invaded to kill the Revolution, just like they invaded Poland-Lithuania because of its own reforms.
Edit: And did so with the support of domestic conservatives forces.
 
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Whilryke said:
Sooner or later the monarchies of Europe would've invaded to kill the Revolution, just like they invaded Poland-Lithuania because of its own reforms.
Edit: And did so with the support of domestic conservatives forces.
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Eh? To start with they were all pretty happy to see France knocked down a peg. If France isn't precieved as a threat/ doesn't go around antagonizing everyone, I think they can avoid war. Poland was specifically different because other powers precieved it as a buffer state that they needed to control. France was a great power rival.

The great "Forces of Reaction" aren't united until France United them. Otherwise they all go continuing on in the Stately Quadrille. See the English Civil War for an alternative.
 
LtDanAintGotLegs said:
If France isn't precieved as a threat/ doesn't go around antagonizing everyone, I think they can avoid war.
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You fail to realize that the Revolution's very existance poses a threat to the established order the monarchs of Europe sought to uphold, they were scared of a contagion, of their own people getting the same ideas. Reading you it sounds like France is solely at fault for the war, which is simply untrue. France was a great power indeed, that's why the reaction felt the need to unite to take it down.

As for Poland-Lithuania, your answer doesn't prove mine wrong in any way. If anything it reinforces mine as this "need for control" you mention expresses itself by undoing the reforms in order to bring them in line with their own way of governing, meaning the reforms were a threat to it.
Edit: And indeed the Constitution adopted by P-L was hated by Prussia, Russia and the Polish Conservatives of the Targowica Confederation. Russia invaded at the invitation of the Confederation, the latter refered to a "contagion of democratic ideas" and to "the fatal examples set in Paris".
 
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LtDanAintGotLegs said:
If France isn't precieved as a threat/ doesn't go around antagonizing everyone, I think they can avoid war.
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War of the First Coalition: Austria parks an army on the border of France and says, paraphrased, "If you do anything to your rightful King and Queen, we're invading." Revolutionary France, who obviously view the former monarchs as evil criminals, strikes first because of fucking course they would, Austria was going to invade regardless of what France did or didn't do to the two villains. The only thing the French could have done to avoid that war was put Louis back on the throne. Austria was just looking for an excuse.

War of the Second Coalition: France does an absolutely normal - for the era - action in invading Egypt, which causes a whole bunch of completely unrelated countries to see an opportunity and jump on them. This goes poorly for them.

Napoleon becomes Emperor. Relatively shortly after, Britain declares war on them on basically no pretext whatsoever. They make no progress, but the war doesn't ever actually stop because France was equally incapable of sinking the Royal Navy.

War of the Third Coalition: Using the pretext that France was killing nobles in Italy - which was true, but fuck those guys anyway, not to mention that the specific guy was accused of working with Britain to try and unseat Napoleon, so he was executed for treason - a bunch of countries tried their luck invading France again, and failed.

War of the Fourth Coalition: Because Napoleon had put the majority of the Little Germanies into one country, the Confederation of the Rhine - presumably because he was sick of the border gore in central Europe - Prussia, Russia, and a few others declared war on France, proceeding to lose badly.

The thing you may have noticed about all of those wars is that they weren't France's fault.
 
Whilryke said:
You fail to realize that the Revolution's very existance poses a threat to the established order the monarchs of Europe sought to uphold, they were scared of a contagion, of their own people getting the same ideas. Reading you it sounds like France is solely at fault for the war, which is simply untrue. France was a great power indeed, that's why the reaction felt the need to unite to take it down.

As for Poland-Lithuania, your answer doesn't prove mine wrong in any way. If anything it reinforces mine as this "need for control" you mention expresses itself by undoing the reforms in order to bring them in line with their own way of governing, meaning the reforms were a threat to it.
Edit: And indeed the Constitution adopted by P-L was hated by Prussia, Russia and the Polish Conservatives of the Targowica Confederation. Russia invaded at the invitation of the Confederation, the latter refered to a "contagion of democratic ideas" and to "the fatal examples set in Paris".
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No, they weren't afraid, until France ran around exporting the revolution. You're looking backwards with a post Napoleonic wars mindset on Revolutionary Contagion, but at the time no one has any sense how quickly it was going to get out of control.

France wasn't solely at fault, no one ever is, but they certainly had opportunities to avoid war by being less paranoid.
 
LtDanAintGotLegs said:
No, they weren't afraid, until France ran around exporting the revolution. You're looking backwards with a post Napoleonic wars mindset on Revolutionary Contagion, but at the time no one has any sense how quickly it was going to get out of control.

France wasn't solely at fault, no one ever is, but they certainly had opportunities to avoid war by being less paranoid.
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Iirc Austria didn't really expect the French to get riled up as much as they did — from what I remember of Duncan, they were going off of how their earlier threats had launched the relatively pacifist (wrt foreign policy) Fouyons clique into power, and expected France to concede more following further threats.

...except revolutions are volatile as fuck, so Austria just ended up causing a wave of panic in France which led to the collapse of the Fouyons clique and the ascendance of the far more fiery Girondins, and the series of events that followed directly led to the eruption of war.
 
LtDanAintGotLegs said:
No, they weren't afraid, until France ran around exporting the revolution. You're looking backwards with a post Napoleonic wars mindset on Revolutionary Contagion, but at the time no one has any sense how quickly it was going to get out of control.

France wasn't solely at fault, no one ever is, but they certainly had opportunities to avoid war by being less paranoid.
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The French King was literally writing letters begging his relatives and allies across Europe to invade France to put down the revolution when it was still in its very moderate stages. A constitutional monarchy similar to Britain's was considered a step too far for reactionaries in Europe. The Revolution didn't start with Napoleonic Wars. It ended with them. You're ignoring the 20 years of history that led up to 1815.
 
Also, something that you have to understand about revolutionary movements, especially those focused around the idea of empowering underprivileged individuals, is that they have appeal beyond their geographic scope. Anyone in Britain, Spain, Austria, Italy or what have you who was sympathetic to the ideas of democracy and the end of Monarchy would take notes about the French Revolution. The idea that you could legitimately overthrow your monarch, give electoral power to the common peasantry, and not crumble was something that would spark further revolutions. So the monarchies started looking for excuses because they needed to make an example of France.
 
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Fission Battery said:
The French King was literally writing letters begging his relatives and allies across Europe to invade France to put down the revolution when it was still in its very moderate stages. A constitutional monarchy similar to Britain's was considered a step too far for reactionaries in Europe. The Revolution didn't start with Napoleonic Wars. It ended with them. You're ignoring the 20 years of history that led up to 1815.
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He was, and no one particularly cared. Again, the precedent there is the English Civil War that everyone is working from. Until France flips the table, there isn't nearly the urgency. The French Revolution set the precedent for how revolutions were perceived in Europe, and it wasn't a good one. The French Revolution was what taught the European powers that be that revolution needed to be strangled in the crib, or it would wash Europe in blood.
 
LtDanAintGotLegs said:
He was, and no one particularly cared.
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Except for the Austrians and Prussians parking an army on the border and threatening dire consequences for the country if it doesn't restore the king's power.

You're taking it backwards. Revolutions wouldn't wash Europe in blood if it wasn't for the reactionaries seeking to kill it. It's because of their refusal to accept the Revolutionary France that France reasoned they had to expand and turn everyone into republics or perish, because the reactionaries themselves wouldn't settle for anything else than the latter.
 
LtDanAintGotLegs said:
The French Revolution was what taught the European powers that be that revolution needed to be strangled in the crib, or it would wash Europe in blood.
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Because Europe totally wasn't already being washed in blood by the monarchies around France because Lord Farthingbottom of the Barony of Assfuck, Austria wanted to expand his territory by 2 centimetres northeast.
 
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Parzival said:
Robespierre did win against the Girondins.
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it's just that he let his paranoia get the best of him and ended up killing or alienating most of the people who would've liked his reforms.While I personally find stuff like the new Calendar and Cult of Reason silly at best and harmful at worst but that doesn't I can't respect the man for his dedication.
 
Balmung1 said:
it's just that he let his paranoia get the best of him and ended up killing or alienating most of the people who would've liked his reforms. While I personally find stuff like the new Calendar and Cult of Reason silly at best and harmful at worst but that doesn't I can't respect the man for his dedication.
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He was certainly a crazy dude with crazy ideas, but compared to centuries of decay and stagnation against inbred Monarchies? Robespierre all the way!
 
Mashriqi said:
He was certainly a crazy dude with crazy ideas, but compared to centuries of decay and stagnation against inbred Monarchies? Robespierre all the way!
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I wouldn't say he was insane the best and worst parts about Robspierre was that he was utterly devoted to his cause and knew it.Like as a Catholic I really don't like the idea of desecrating churches but I am okay with the seizure of Church lands and can understand how after everything a lot of people might get carried away in their attempts.If robspierre dropped the paranoia he would've probably been considered a great leader for his efforts and his incorruptability(though still not liked by the right).I also wouldn't say decay and stagnation because like a lot of things change in European history all the time.I wouldn't say the monarchies were stagnant but instead they were changing in a way that we really wouldn't have liked.
 
Whilryke said:
Except for the Austrians and Prussians parking an army on the border and threatening dire consequences for the country if it doesn't restore the king's power.
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Which happened after his attempt to flee the country failed at Varennes and dialogue was effectively broken for good between him and the revolutionnaries. And the revolutionaries had by then burnt the bridges between them and the Catholic Church, starting the troubles with the Vendeans and the beginnings of fracturing the country into civil war, although the Girondin are only going to get up in arms by the time of the levee en masse.

And the zealous defenders of royalty of the First Coalition initially only settled for strongly worded but vague letters in summer 91 because they didn't think the matter would worsen, which is admittedly a major failure at diplomacy there. They were too busy taking the last slices of the Polish for themselves cake made available by the troubles of the last ally Poland had, France, to care for doing more than that until the French moved for the offensive in summer 92.

And even then First Coalition pretty much failed because that early in the war, they were more preoccupied about being the one getting the best share of the winnings over murdering the French Revolution. Which is a not small part of why Valmy stopped the Prussians: they got stalemated, but man this campaign is starting to look like it will cost a lot more money and men than expected, and are we really doing the Austrians' job of saving their ruler's step-brother for them for free? Screw that, let's regroup for later.

Let's say the ardent wish of murdering the French Revolution doesn't look like it's really there in 1789-92.
 
Hardric62 said:
Let's say the ardent wish of murdering the French Revolution doesn't look like it's really there in 1789-92.
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Domestic reactionaries did a poor job squashing the Revolution that it's time for friends from overseas to do the job for them. Sounds very familiar and is always a constant historical theme.

Doesn't change the fact that overseas reactionaries wouldn't try to do the job if it's them that needs to do it.
 
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Parzival said:
Robespierre did win against the Girondins.
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I had a mental hole haha, for some reason I confused the Girondins and the Thermidorians.
But yeah, you get the point. I wish the Jacobins remained governing, it doesn't matter if it was Robespierre or Saint-Just. Ironically, both were considered moderates by other political figures, like Jacques Hébert.
 
The fact that Thermidor rather than Robespierre is a short-hand for revolutionary betrayal is the ultimate example that it doesn't matter what you say (or do), its how you deliver it applies just as much to politics as it does to rhetoric.
 
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